Dehumanizing Palestinians doesn't erase unique identity

[Scurrilous]

<snip>

"People are tired of hearing about it," a friend once told me matter-of-factly about the Middle East conflict.

Tell me about it.

As a first-generation American of Palestinian descent, I can vouch that nobody is more tired of this conflict than Palestinians. But many of us don't have the luxury of flipping the channel or ignoring what is happening to our relatives and friends. Pregnant women are dying at Israeli checkpoints and children are being stoned on their way to school by Jewish settlers.

We do what we can but it never feels sufficient. And though we're 100% Semitic, the usual tiring label of "anti-Semite" is thrown at us for speaking out against the injustices.

This week marked the 59th anniversary of Israel's creation and the Dispossession of the Palestinians from their land. I'll save the history lessons because the realities have even been acknowledged by Israeli historians, most recently by Professor Ilan Pappe in 2006 with his book, "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine."

Instead, I'd like to focus on the Palestinian people."

more

[pelsar]

1. poor research.....or just yellow journalism?

There is no such thing as a Palestinian." Too bad she didn't read up on history

too bad the author of the article didnt do his own research:

'Do you think the emergence of the Palestinian fighting forces, the Fedayeen, an important new factor in the Middle East?
Golda Meir: Important, no. A new factor, yes. There was no such a thing as Palestinians. When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian State? It was either southern Syria before the First World War and than it was a Palestine including Jordan. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist."


Again, you can object to her position, but she's not claiming there weren't people; rather that there was no national entity known as Palestinians (note also the use of the past tense).

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/eyl/11

[dave_p]

2. There was no Israeli nationhood before 1948 either

... go back far enough and we were all just muddled ethnic or linguistic clusters somewhere on the map.

Nations aren't innate, they develop over time. Zionism's as much an expression of that as Arab indentification, indeed both took their cue from European constructs.

I wasn't aware that Goilda Meir - or any Israel - was qualified to determine Palestinians' qualification for identification as a people. I'd hoped there was a bit more to it than that.

875,000 Arabs did exist before 1948 in the part of Palestine later taken for Israel, but only 155,000 after. Someone must have done something with the rest. It wasn't me, honest. :shrug:

[pelsar]

3. what so confusing?

there simply was no nationstate "palestine" nor was there a national identity of such pre48....in fact if you even did some research you would discover that pre48 when palestenians were mentioned they actually were referring to the jews living in there

[dave_p]

6. Seems everything's confusing to you

I've already addressed this. Not many pre-'48 Israelis, either.

The suggestion that "Palestinians" represents the former identification of the Jewish population is simply absurd. They were Palestinian Jews. Others were Palestinian Arabs. Now they are Israelis and Palestinians. These infantile games are tiresome.

[Douglas Carpenter]

8. thank you in 1911 Eisa al Eisa and his brother yousef founded the

newspaper "Filistine" in which they addressed their readers as "Dear Palestinians". The term was already used and the identity there and developing if not established before the Balfour Delcaration, much less 1948.

Thank you for your post.

"1911 Filistine newspaper is founded in Jaffa by Issa al-Issa. The newspaper addresses Arabs in Palestine as Palestinians"

http://www.palestinecenter.org/cpap/timelines/timelinepales.html

.

[bemildred]

9. Yeah, first Palestine National Congress was 1919, IIRC.

Ah, here it is in the Jewish Virtual Library:

1919 - First Palestinian National Congress meeting in Jerusalem sends two memoranda to Versailles rejecting Balfour Declaration and demanding independence.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/brits.html

[Violet_Crumble]

4. Noooo! He wants to focus on the Palestinian people! That's a big no-no!

Unless he goes about it by making sure every reference to them is a negative one, he will be pounced on and asked Why Do You Hate Israel? and maybe called an antisemite....

It's a good article, Scurrilous. Dehumanisation of the other group of people is done by both sides, and it's used as a tactic to try to give one side the moral high ground over the other when it comes to claims over Israel and the Palestinian territories. I've noticed that those who fall for the dehumanisation routine when it comes to one group are usually the first to claim that their 'side' doesn't indulge in dehumanisation of the other, and it's only the other side that does it...

[pelsar]

5. good research is good research

taking a quote out of context to make a point...is inexcusable....one does not need to dance around it, especially such a famous quote.

one may or may not agree with the article or the jist of it, but it does make one wonder if there are other research mistakes.
(or do agree with those journalists that believe making up stuff is ok as long as it aids in making the point you want?...i.e the end justifies the means)

[Douglas Carpenter]

7. two excellent scholarly works on Palestinians as a people

"The Palestinian People: A History" by Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S. Migdal

Amazon link:

http://www.amazon.com/Palestinian-People-History-Baruch-Kimmerling/dp/0674011295/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-8701952-4352901?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1179500545&sr=1-1

"Palestinian Identity" by Rashid Khalidi

Amazon link:

http://www.amazon.com/Palestinian-Identity-Rashid-Khalidi/dp/0231105150/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3/102-8701952-4352901?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1179502269&sr=1-3

Both of these scholarly works; the first "The Palestinian People: A History" by Israeli Sociologist and Historian Baruch Kimmerling and American Historian Joel S. Migdal, and the second Palestinian Identity by Rashid Khalidi Of Columbia University reveal and document how Palestinian history and identity goes back much farther and much deeper than has been acknowledged by many political propagandist.

.

[pelsar]

11. did you read the second book?

i found this statement on amazon actually quite interesting:

Even here, however, he offers a fascinating analysis of why Palestinian nationalism seemingly became ``submerged'' after the first Arab- Israeli War (194749)
____

not having read the book i can hardly write about it, however my understanding of the palestenian identity pre 48:


was that it was "fluid" in some respects..which makes sense given the way the land changed owners over the years. At any rate, Goldas point was that there was not a defined palestenian national identity at that point....given the fact that there was no nationstate of palestine, no traditional national symbols, no specific culture, i think it was a reasonable assesment of the situation.

Today there is a developed palestenian culture, identity, with the all the 'trappings".

the auther by taking her statement out of context degrades his article in to piece of propaganda.

[Violet_Crumble]

14. "The Palestinian People" is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of the Palestinians n/t

[oberliner]

10. Author is a hypocrite

Complains of dehumanizing the Palestinians, yet she herself compares Israelis to the Nazis.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles/SherriWarsaw.htm

[Violet_Crumble]

13. No, they didn't...

Good thing I went and read that article coz when I clicked on the link I expected a rant calling Israelis Nazis. That wasn't there. What was there was someone who said that what Israel was doing wasn't the same, but was pointing out some similarities. I think if anyone is going to bring up aspects of the Holocaust, they need to be sensitive about it and make sure they point out they're not the same thing, and in this case it wasn't one of those 'Israel = Nazis!!!' rants...

I've got a question for you. The author talks about the way Palestinians are dehumanised. Do you see that Palestininians are dehumanised, or do you think it's just Israelis that are victims of dehumanisation?

[oberliner]

15. Thanks for reading the article

If one is suggesting that the situation in the West Bank is analogous to the situation in the Warsaw Ghetto then who other than the Nazis are the Israelis being compared to?

In response to your question, I think that both sides are dehumanized by the other, however I do not think that the examples she provides in the OP are valid ones.

I do not believe that Israelis deliberately chose the term "Israeli Arab" in order to "white out" any Palestinian heritage or history.

I also would argue that the oft-quoted line for Golda Meir that she included in her article is misrepresented as at the time of her statement there were many Arab leaders who posited that there was indeed one Arab nation and worked to unite the various countries under a single entity.

There is no doubt, however, that both Israelis and Palestinians in their actions and in their words have done a great deal to make the other group appear to be less than human, and I think that is deplorable.

[Igel]

12. She's bought the myth.

" The ancient Canaanites weren't called Palestinians, but neither were the Mesopotamians called Iraqis or the Celts called Irish or British. Still, the roots are unquestionable and run eternally deep, from archeological finds to folktales."

Actually, the ancient Celts had no notion that they were Celts; they were simply tribes. At some point in prehistory the group that peeled off of Indo-European may have had some self-consciousness, but that's the best you can say.

Same for the now-extinct Canaanites. No real group consciousness there; powers came through, tribes fought, but they were tribes.

As for heritage ... There might be a trace of Canaanitish in the Palestinians--along with the Lebanese, Armenian, Circassion, Arab, and other ethnicities that merged to make them. After all, there was a bit of Canaanitish in Jews, and, well, probably a fair number converted when early Islam stopped being nearly as beneficent as it started out. (:sarcasm:) But the myth requires that a number of conquerors completely miss the Palestinians in their exiles, oppression, subjugation, etc., etc. "The land was desolate" means "The land was bustling with Palestinians".

However, many Palestinians--as this writer does implicitly--deny Jews the history that the Roman writings (both "Roman Empire" and "Byzantine" Romans) and archeological records require, or try to make up some story how all the *real* Jews are gone or felt all happy under Islamic domination. (And all the black slaves in the American South were happy, too.)